Aspire 13 bolsters Python, JavaScript support

Microsoft has released Aspire 13, the latest version of the company’s tool kit for building distributed, cloud-native applications. With Aspire 13, Python and JavaScript become “first-class citizens” of the development platform, Microsoft said, with comprehensive support for running, debugging, and deploying applications written in these languages.

Aspire 13 was announced November 11 and is downloadable from aspire.dev.

A full polyglot application platform, Aspire 13 also introduces the aspire do command, which breaks builds and deployments down into parallelizable steps, as well as a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server for AI assistance. For Python, release notes stress support for Python modules, deployment with the Python-based uvicorn web server, flexible package management (uv, pip, or venv), and generation of production Dockerfiles automatically. Improved JavaScript support, meanwhile, centers on Vite and npm-based apps with package manager auto-detection, debugging support, and container-based build pipelines.

The aspire do command, now in an early preview stage, is billed as a complete reimagination of building, publishing, and deploying pipelines. Instead of a monolithic “hit deploy and pray” experience, aspire do breaks everything down into discrete, parallelizable steps with dependency tracking, Microsoft said. Independent operations are automatically parallelized, making for fast deployments. Also, the Aspire dashboard now includes a preview of an MCP server that lets AI assistants directly query a running application. The MCP server enables AI coding assistants to list all resources with their state and endpoints, access console logs in real time, retrieve structured logs and traces, and execute commands on resources.

Previously called .NET Aspire, Aspire provides tools, packages, and templates for building observable, production-ready distributed apps. Aspire provides a unified toolchain for launching and debugging an application locally with one command, then deploying to Kubernetes, the cloud, or a user’s own servers via the same composition, according to Microsoft. Aspire 13 requires the .NET 10 SDK or later.

Microsoft noted a few other new features and improvements in Aspire 13. Database resources now automatically expose multiple connection string formats, including the URI format for Python apps and JDBC format for Java apps. Aspire 13 automatically configures certificate trust for Python (SSL_CERT_FILE), Node.js (NODE_EXTRA_CA_CERTS), and containers. And Aspire now generates optimized multi-stage Dockerfiles that detect a Node version from .nvmrc, .node-version, or package.json.